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5. "The River"

Many of the tragic characters in Springsteen's songs are fictional. But the teenage couple in "The River" were drawn from his own real-life experience. Springsteen's sister Ginny became pregnant at age 18 and quickly married her child's father, Mickey Shave, who took a construction job to support his family. "They had to struggle very hard back in the late Seventies, like so many people are doing today," Springsteen said when he performed The River live in its entirety in 2009. He turned their story into his most moving working-class lament, a slow, sparse ballad with a mournful harmonica part that starts to sound like a funeral dirge as the song ends. Springsteen debuted "The River" at the No Nukes concert in September 1979, shortly after recording it with the E Street Band at New York's Power Station studio. His sister was in the crowd, but she didn't know that Springsteen had written a song about her. "Every bit of it was true," Ginny told Springsteen biographer Peter Ames Carlin. "And here I am, completely exposed. I didn't like it at first – but now it's my favorite song." Today, Ginny and Mickey are still happily married.